Protectors of the Earth
by MercurialInK
Summary: Saving people, hunting Kaiju - The Family Business. AKA: Sam always knew he was going to die in a Jaeger.
1. Prologue

Protectors of the Earth

Part I: Drop

 ** _Prologue:_**

When disaster came calling, nobody was ready for it.

To be fair, before the Kaiju started leveling entire cities in the course of an hour, anyone sounding warning bells about giant alien monsters rising from the seas would have been dismissed as entirely insane. Rightly so, too.

But that was reality now.

Every country with a coastline was in danger, and in those first devastating years, the Kaiju did a lot of damage. It looked like the end of days. When it took a nuclear arsenal to rid the world of just one of the beasts, that's when you knew you were in trouble.

It seemed like humanity's days were truly numbered.

And then an international coalition of countries came together. They decided that the only way to fight the monsters preying on the earth was to build bigger, better monsters.

Bobby Singer, a former mechanic and marine pilot was placed in charge of the Jaeger pilot program, an experimental and obscenely expensive venture that represented humanity's last hope against the Kaiju. The program was both incredibly awesome and batshit fucking insane.

The first wave of Mark I pilots were (and would still be, decades later) widely considered to be tough as nails, and completely, utterly, and bewilderingly crazy.

For one thing, the Mark I Jaegers were all self contained, fuelled by a nuclear core with little to no protection, meaning that the pilots risked death by cancer or spontaneous nuclear detonation. For another, the Drift was unstable, and the bond required to allow both pilots to remain in control of the giant robot meant placing an unimaginable level of trust in another person. It placed pilots at a danger of going insane, reducing them to a dribbling, incoherent mess. Oh, and the weapons were all prototypes, and many early flights had technicians in the control room crossing their fingers they would explode on themselves when tested in the field.

All this, of course, is besides the fact that these pilots heard "sign up for this program, you will literally hunt down the giant monsters that have already caused billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives worth of damage and punch the crap out of them" and decided to say "sign me up!"

Again, it was awesome, but it was also totally batshit insane.

Bobby Singer and his partner Rufus Turner were the first to try the drift compatible technology, and theirs was the first completed Jaeger: a Mark I prototype, codename: Rumsfeld.

Ellen Harvelle and Daniel Elkins represented the first Russian Mark I; codename Salyut. She had similar specifications as Rumsfeld, but with three extra cannon ports. Her name in Russian meant "fireworks" and Ellen liked to say the old girl lived up to her name in the field.

The last of that round of Jaeger pilots, from the first early days of its inception, were Japan's Linda Tran and Mako Miori, who piloted Coyote Tango.

Common public opinion generally agreed that those first six pilots and were the biggest badasses on the planet, and also probably the craziest sons of bitches that ever lived.

But then something even crazier than people fighting alien monsters in giant robots happened.

Humanity started winning.

The Kaiju stopped being an existential threat to the human race. Instead, they became something to laugh at. Bedtime stories that could only frighten children – and with the amount of targeted Kaiju merchandise aimed at children, even they didn't fear the Kaiju.

The Jaegers did their job, and did it well.

It was during this, the first successful year of the Jaeger program, that the first category two Kaiju made its appearance.

One minute, Salyut and Rumsfeld were holding their own.

The next, the massive category two beast took Salyut by surprise, tearing it own with a swing of it's massive, barbed tail. Salyut went dark, and Harvelle and Elkins were gone. A moment later, Bobby was screaming out in pain as the Kaiju rammed into Rumsfeld headfirst, goring it open.

And then it was open season. The Kaiju destroyed half of Hong Kong before Coyote Tango brought it down. Of the four pilots, only Bobby made it.

That was a wake up call. The program needed more Jaegers – with more frequent attacks, they couldn't afford to have less than three functional Jaegers at any given point, which led to the development of the Mark II, and a massive spike in recruiting.

John Winchester was personally recruited by Bobby Singer to the program as his copilot. The two of them had the highest kill count of any single pair of pilots.

That was, of course, until the Winchester boys signed up to pilot their own Jaeger.

Hunting Kaiju, saving the world, it was practically the family business.

Then everything went horrifically wrong.


	2. Part I Chapter I

_Pt I, Chapter One: Fall_

 _..._

Dean Winchester was wild and loud and proud and completely fucking stoked to punch out Kaiju. Those that had been around for the first wave of Jaeger pilots said privately that he was cut from the same stock as those early brave souls that put their lives on the line with no idea whether or not it would work.

He could fight, his accuracy with almost any weapon was all but unrivaled, and he loved the job. By the time he stepped foot into his first Jaeger, Dean had been run on 105 different simulations, and had 105 kills.

Of course, there was a problem of finding him a partner.

Five years after the first Kaiju attack and two years after officially joining the Jaeger program, Dean still didn't have a steady copilot. He took too many risks, he made his copilots nervous, he fought with them too much to have a steady neural handshake, the issues ran on and on.

The problem was only resolved when the third Winchester joined the Jaeger pilot force. Sam gave up a free ride to Stanford for officer training in the Marines. He'd been recruited not because of his bloodline, but his talent as a pilot, and his close quarters combat training. Sam was fast tracked through his training.

He'd beaten out his brother's record for simulation drops. His scores with bladed weapons were the highest of any pilot ever admitted to the program. And his theoretical understanding of the Jaeger itself was more and more obvious with every simulated drop. He could maximize the fighting potential of a Jaeger, able to compartmentalize multiple functions in a way few pilots could.

The first time Bobby put the Winchester brothers in a Jaeger together, he knew he'd made a great call. The two brothers already practically lived in each other's heads. When you spoke to them, they were just as likely to answer as a matched pair as anything else. When they walked down the goddamn street their steps fell into automatic synch, and they could share whole sentences with a glance – and that was all before they made their first drift connection.

They were perfectly matched, and more than that, they had complementary skill sets. Sam, whose greatest strength was in strategy, close quarters combat, and bladed weapons, worked as a complement to Deans' great skill at working on the fly and ranged combat.

Bobby put them in the newest Mark III rolled out by the United States. She was dubbed Impala – named after the car that had protected all three Winchesters as they fled from the very first Kaiju attack on San Francisco. Dean went so far as to find the small pair of army guys that they had salvaged from Impala's remains after the attack, and tied them above Impala's screen.

Together, the brothers carved their initials under the control plate.

S.W. and D.W. Impala was theirs, and for a few, glorious years, she was unstoppable. They were unstoppable, their reputations almost larger than those of the Kaiju they took down.

Twelve drops, twelve kills. And both of them walked away from every single one of those drops without a scratch.

Their mutual success was unfortunately short lived, and doomed to disaster.

…

Dean was pulled out of bed by the blaring of sirens.

"Hey Sammy!" He shouted, slamming his hand down on the bottom bunk where his brother was still asleep. Sam opened his eyes groggily, staring up at him.

"Come on, let's go gank some Kaiju!" Dean grinned.

"We got something?" Sam asked.

"Category three, heading for the coast of Alaska," Dean said. "Have you ever _seen_ a category three?"

Sam frowned, sitting up straight.

"I haven't," he said. "I don't think _anyone_ has."

"Exactly Sammy, we can be the first people to gank an even _bigger, fuglier_ son of a bitch!"

Sam rolled his eyes and started pulling on his clothes, still mostly asleep.

"And after we kill it, we can go to Disneyland!" He said with false excitement.

"Don't talk to me with that tone of sass."

"Then don't talk about Kaiju like it's Christmas morning and they're toys that got dropped off under the tree," Sam replied, pulling on a shirt.

"That's what, the second this month?" he continued. "These events are happening closer and closer together. After the incident in Hong Kong I thought we wouldn't see any action for a while."

"Whatever man," Dean shot back. "All I know is, a Kaiju comes knocking, I'm knocking it back, you with me?"

Sam snorted, fastening his boots and standing to face his brother.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "So long as we're both around if you're in a Jaeger I'll be there next to you."

"That's my boy!" Dean grinned, ruffling his brothers hair. "Now lets hunt some Kaiju!"

Sam chuckled despite himself but he fell into step right next to his brother, marching down the halls towards the hangar where Impala was waiting for them.

"There's my baby!" Dean crowed as they neared Impala, petting the side of her foot lovingly.

"Do you two need a moment?" Sam asked sardonically. "A room? Please by all means don't let me or the giant alien monster about to attack Alaska get in the way of your star crossed romance."

"Aw don't listen to him," Dean whispered to the Jaeger. "He's just grumpy because he got up early. And cuz he's a bitch."

"Whatever jerk."

"You should be nicer, my baby deserves some respect for all the good work she does."

"When did she become _your_ baby? Get this Dean, we're _both_ her pilots."

"Yeah but I'm the oldest."

Sam stared at his brother in exasperation.

"I have no idea what that has to do with anything," he said.

"It means I'm in charge."

"Boys!"

"Sir!"

Dean and Sam both turned and stood at attention at the same time, facing their father and Bobby.

"Enough with the bickering," John ordered. "Your target is our first category three. He's bigger than any of the ones we've had before, which goes without saying. You need to intercept him before he reaches the coast."

"We have a codename for this son of a bitch?" Dean asked.

"Knifehead," John said. "We're trying to use radar imaging to get an idea of what you're dealing with, and we'll send information to Impala on route."

"Great, lets do this," Dean said.

"Be careful, and good hunting," John said, looking first at Dean and then Sam. "We've never seen a Kaiju like this before so don't take risks you don't have to. I want both of you back here in one piece."

"Not that anyone cares what I have to say," Bobby drawled. "But I'd also like my Jaeger in one piece if you can manage it."

Dean saluted with a wild grin while Sam nodded seriously.

The two of them climbed into the Jaeger, taking up their standard positions: Sam on the right, Dean to the left.

"You ready?" Charlie asked over the com. The overly excited tech was a complete geek – and Impala's ever watching head technician. Strictly speaking, she wasn't really old enough to be here, given than she was all of seventeen. But she was a brilliant hacker and even more brilliant with Jaegers, and given the very real potential of the end of the world, the Jaeger program was working with whoever could lend the skills they needed.

She was also a massive dork, which made her both a best friend and a little sister to the Winchester brothers, whose baby was her primary responsibility.

"Born ready," Dean grinned over at Sam, who smiled back. "Lets get up close and personal with my baby."

This was for them the easiest part of the job. Most pilots found it to be the hardest, as opening themselves up to another person – even one they cared about – in this way could be exceptionally uncomfortable. But the brothers had always been close, and they'd done so many drops it was as easy as breathing.

They relaxed and entered the drift smoothly.

"Neural handshake holding strong as always boys," Charlie called over the radio. "We're dropping you off near Knifehead's position in t minus twenty, so you've got time to do your status checks and make sure everythings worked out."

"You fix my girls' plasma cannons?" Dean asked. "They were sticking last time."

"Brand new, well oiled and ready for battle. And don't blame my girl's cannons for your shitty reaction time."

"You double check the reactor? Because she was giving me some finicky readings last time and I-"

"Dean your girlfriend is fine," Charlie cut in. "I take good care of her, and I audit her code every time she comes back in."

Dean grumbled something and Sam rolled his eyes.

"We're fine Charlie, thanks for taking such good care of her," Sam said. "Hermione Granger couldn't do a better job getting us prepared."

"Aw, thanks Sam!"

"Kiss ass," Dean muttered.

"Its called being nice," Sam said. "You're in my brain half the time, so I know you know how to do it. You should try it some time. Also, she's seventeen, don't be mean."

"Ha, ha," Dean grumbled.

"Plus dude, she may be seventeen but I bet she could ruin your life without ever leaving her computer so it pays to be on her good side."

Dean shrugged his agreement with that assessment, and they got down to their pre drop checks.

Several tests of functionality later, and Sam and Dean were assured their Jaeger was as ready as ever. Right before the drop, however, Bobby's voice came over the com.

"There's a small ten person fishing vessel in the area," Bobby said, voice coming in clear. "Your priority is to neutralize Knifehead. _Do not_ risk this Jaeger, yourselves, or our coastal defenses, do you understand me?"

"Ice cold Bobby," Sam said quietly. "That's ten people out there we could save-"

"Winchester idjits two and three, I am giving you an order. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir," Dean ground out, and glanced over at Sam. "We understand."

"Its not right," Sam started in once the radio was shut off. "If that Kaiju goes after that ship-"

"Sammy I know," Dean said – rather unnecessarily, because of course he understood Sam's feelings, he always knew what Sam meant even before they literally started spending time hanging out in each others heads. "We'll do what we have to, okay? Hopefully we can gank this Kaiju before it comes to that."

Sam nodded back and they readied themselves for the drop.

"We're going down," Charlie called over the radio. "Knifehead is a mile due east, you're closing in fast."

"Thanks Charlie," Sam said. "See you soon!"

The brothers felt the lurch of the Jaeger as they dropped into the Pacific Ocean, and engaged the thrusters to keep her above water. With a rush of exhilaration and adrenaline, the hunt was on.

Impala's heat sensors narrowed in on the Kaiju, which had its sights set on the Alaskan coast.

Dean whooped in excitement as they closed the ground between them and the monster. It _was_ huge, bigger than any Kaiju Sam had ever seen or heard of. Sam glanced at Dean, wondering if his older brother felt the fear racing in his bloodstream – this monster was humongous. And if there were even bigger monsters than the ones they'd already been fighting, who was to say there weren't bigger monsters still?

"One Kaiju at a time Sammy," Dean cut in. "Lets toast this son of a bitch first!"

Sam nodded in determination, and refocused his attention on taking down the Kaiju in front of them.

When they were almost on top of it, Knifehead turned and with a screeching roar, began to charge directly at Impala.

Kaiju met Jaeger with a deafening, shuddering crash. Sam and Dean shouted out together, excitement and adrenaline racing through them. They kept Impala upright, digging her massive feet into a sandbank below.

"Sword arm ready," Sam announced, and Impala, responding to his commands, unsheathed the massive blade contained in her right arm. They managed a glancing blow that Knifehead dodged at the last second, only tearing into the Kaijus skin a little.

"Not quite on the mark little brother," Dean grinned. "Lemme show you how it's done!"

The plasma cannons were armed and ready, and Dean got off two shots, one of which hit the Kaiju straight on.

"All right!" he whooped, but it didn't do any noticeable damage. The Kaiju roared again and charged the Jaeger, sending it nearly toppling into the ocean.

"Aw shit, she's huge!" Dean yelled.

"No kidding!" Sam yelled back.

He swung the Jaegers right arm, and the massive robot moved with him, slicing at the Kaiju with the sword, giving them some room to right themselves.

They faced each other, rain slamming down around them, waves crashing up against the polished metal of Impala's outer hull, sent spraying by the huge monster in it's depths.

"We gotta find a weak spot under that thick skin," Sam muttered, Impala's tech scanning the heavy, armor like skin. And, there! He could see the fleshy underside of it's skin, the perfect place to strike, but Dean wasn't listening anymore.

"Sammy, look!" He called out. "The fishing boat!"

"Dean, we have to take the shot!"

"No, look!"

The heat scanner had picked up the small vessel – which was about to sail in the middle of a battle between a giant armed robot and a massive monster hell bent on destruction.

"We gotta do something!"

"Dean, in case you haven't noticed, there's a Kaiju _right there! We need to take it down, now,_ or it's going to kill the civilians too! _"_

"Exactly, we need to get these civilians out of the way!"

"GODDAMN IT LISTEN TO ME DEAN!"

"No Sammy, this is what we're supposed to be doing, saving people," Dean growled, pulling back the cannon extension on his arm.

"Dean!" Sam yelled in exasperation, because Dean wasn't actually listening at all, but he wasn't going to win this fight. He could see it in the stubborn set of his brothers face, and if he fought Dean, they'd break the neural handshake and end up as Kaiju meat.

He tore his eyes away from the Kaiju and nodded to Dean.

"Lets get this over with so we can deal with the Kaiju," Sam groaned.

Divering a blow from the Kaiju, the brothers sent it flying back into the water, throwing up a massive wave.

"We can relocate the ship a few miles south, keep it out of the way," Dean called out, and Sam grunted in response.

"I don't like this," he said.

"Impala! What the hell are you doing out there!"

"Sorry sir, but there are ten people down here –"

"Of all the ridiculous, insubordinate-"

"We'll take care of the ship and get back to pounding Kaiju in thirty seconds," Dean snapped. "I'm not letting people die if I can help it."  
"You idjits!" Bobby snarled. "You're going to get yourselves killed!"

"We'll be fine!" Dean shot back, closing the Jaegers arm over the ship. He gently handled it, carrying it as lightly as he could manage.

"Dean Winchester, you turn that Jaeger around, that is an _order!"_

Sam saw Dean flinch at the steel in their father's voice, but he glared straight ahead.

"Sorry sir," he replied. "We're getting these civilians out of the way first."

Dean shut down the com, and it was all Sam could do not to groan.

They were both going to die tonight.

Once the ship was well south, they went back after the Kaiju, which had apparently decided the ship wasn't worth it, and was making a beeline for the shore. But the second Sam and Dean caught up with it, Knifehead reared, roared, and tore vicious claws deep into her hull.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean shouted as alarm bells started blaring inside the cockpit.

"Plasma cannons!" he shouted, arming them as Sam pulled out Impalas sword and took a daring swing. It went wide, but the Kaiju dodged right in front of Dean's cannons just in time to catch the blast.

"Nice work Sammy!" Dean shouted as the Kaiju went down. It didn't stay down though, and the Kaiju came screeching up out of the water, toppling Impala backwards as it sun it's teeth into the Jaeger. Sam and Dean kept her upright, gri

Impala lurched back and forth as the Kaiju tore at the metal armor around it. Sparks were flying and they were barely holding onto their control in the drift by a thread.

The Jaeger was falling apart. The Kaiju was screeching in tune with the metal of the giant robots hull. The rush of waves was a dull roar and Dean could feel the cold spray of ocean rain and – aw shit, they were fully exposed now –

He could feel the Jaeger jolt. He saw his brother collide painfully backwards –

"SAMMY!"

The scream was torn from his throat, lost in the cacophony of wind and storm and category three Kaiju ready to tear them to pieces.

"SAMMY!"

Sam's eyes shot up, wide and fearful – god he was so afraid, Dean could feel his brothers fear like his own, could feel the pain from the collision, the certainty that they were going to die here in the freezing waters of Alaska.

And then there was another roar, close and loud and terrifying and the Jaeger lurched violently before the Kaiju came into sight, all ugly claws and teeth and horrible, horrible death.

Dean had just a second to process that it was _here,_ it was _inside the Jaeger digging for them_ – before the claw closed on its intended target and Sam was ripped away from him.

There was screaming. It was Dean, it was Sam, it was both of them, lost in the drift, together, one brain, one soul wound so close it was impossible to know where one ended and where the other ended.

Dean could feel the spike in his brothers fear - or perhaps it was his own, his horror and disbelief at losing his _other goddamn half_ \- and he screamed again as he felt the neural handshake _snap._

Sam was _right there_ and then he was _gone._

The pain of it threw Dean out of the drift like a bucket of cold water pulling him from sleep. The Jaeger jerked again and then Dean felt Impala falling towards the sea, completely beyond his power. Her thrusters were failing her and she was on her last legs. He could hear the Kaiju roaring and his brother – his _brother –_ was already dead, consumed by the same crashing, gnawing, biting jaws that were back to tearing at the metal skeleton protecting Dean.

The Kaijus horn fully pierced through the ship and with a grunt Dean pulled himself back to the controls, wrestling his Jaeger back into submission. He'd trust in Impala, she'd get him out.

If he wanted to live, he had to act.

The Kaiju bit down on Impala's arm and Dean fired up the plasma cannon. He had a perfectly lined up shot.

The cannon loaded as the Kaiju ripped away and came back for more. Dean let out a scream of hate, fury, rage, loss – he was lost in the control over the Jaeger and his pain had faded, a dull roar at the edge of his consciousness, to handle as soon as one more fugly bastard was dead.

And then with another violent jolt the cannon fired, hitting the Kaiju dead on, right in the chest. It was a kill shot.

The Kaiju went down. This time, it stayed that way.

And then, completely spent, the Jaeger began to fall.

Dean let the waves wash up against the metal, laying back. He could feel the tears stinging his eyes.

If he wanted to live, he had to act.

He couldn't dwell on his pain if he wanted to survive.

Did he?

Did he even want to live after this?

Rage, pure and clean raced through his veins, hot and familiar.

If he lived, he could fight again. And again. And every drop, every fight, would be one more Kaiju that wasn't going to kill again.

It might be the best deal he'd ever get now.

Piloting a Jaeger alone for any length of time isn't advisable, easy, or safe, but Dean didn't care anymore. He couldn't swim to shore and Impala was his only chance.

Dean moaned with the effort of pulling Impala forward.

Step after step after step.

He could pilot a Jaeger, if nothing else.

All through the night, into the misty fog of morning he pulled the worthless hunk of metal that couldn't even save Sammy to shore. So intent was he on his goal he barely even noticed when the robots knee joints buckled completely. He could hear the hissing of overheated engines and burning parts.

With a crash, Impala's torso hit sand and snow.

Dean groaned and pulled himself free of the controls. His ride was well and truly spent this time.

With a crash of metal the side of the hull came loose and fell, and Dean followed it, stumbling out into the blustering cold of the Alaskan coast and falling to his knees. He couldn't feel the cold of the snow underneath him. He couldn't feel the biting, icy wind as it snapped around his face.

For a moment, the world stopped and all he could feel was the profound loss that consumed him in every meaning of the word.

He fell to the ground, torso bent over knees, and gave himself over to the grief. Today, he thought. Just for today, he could mourn and let himself weep and scream and howl at the loss of his brother.

Tomorrow he would go back to work.

Tomorrow he would fight. He would fight until there was nothing left of him, or nothing left of the Kaiju that killed his brother.

He could make no bargain for his brother, though he would barter anything, everything – his soul, his life, the world, he didn't care, if he could have Sammy back – but he could have revenge.

And if that was all he could have he would take it.

For now, his body wracked with sobbing, he felt so small and lost, and so very, very, alone.

…


	3. Part I Chapter II

_Pt I, Chapter II: Float_

…

"..e? ..ir… Ca…. er… me? Sir can you hear me?"

The voice was insistent but calm. The man opened his eyes.

The world was sterile and white. He turned his head to the side and saw a long line of beds. Part of his mind registered _hospital_ though he wasn't quite sure what put that information there.

"You've been injured in a Kaiju attack. Can you tell me what you remember?"

The man looked up, bewildered. It was true, he could feel pain wracking every part of his body, but he could not recall why he was in such poor straights. He tried to sit up, but the movement sent shooting pain all the way down his side.

"Sir, please, we've had to do extensive surgery. You had multiple broken ribs, and numerous puncture wounds. A few hours ago we weren't sure you would live. Do you remember the Kaiju attack?"

Doctor, the person speaking to him must be a doctor, the man decided. And a Kaiju? What the hell was that?  
"K-kaiju?" the man asked.

"You don't remember the attack," the doctor sighed. "We were hoping you could tell us why you look like a Kaiju chewed you up and spat you back out, but I suppose it's normal for a patient to block out the trauma. Unfortunately, the Kaiju have left quite a mark on many."  
The man was silent for a moment, processing.

He looked up with wide hazel eyes.

"Wh-what's a Kaiju?" He asked.

The doctor pursed his lips in shock, but recovered quickly.

"Sir, can you tell me what the last thing you _do_ remember is?"

The man thought, and part of him knew he had to have had a life before waking up in this hospital, but it was all dark, out of focus, and foggy. He couldn't think of anything that he could call a memory, couldn't bring up a single detail about his life.

"How about your name?" the doctor asked. "Can you remember that?"

The man opened his mouth, something on the tip of his tongue, but nothing came out.

He couldn't.

He couldn't remember his own name.

The man stared up at the doctor with wide, frightened eyes, and the doctor adjusted his glasses sympathetically.

"Oh dear."

…  
They called him Sam.

He was littered with scars and cuts he couldn't explain. He could chalk most of them down to the Kaiju attack that supposedly left him nearly dead and without a single memory of who he was.

But with the apocalypse creeping up on humanity, there was little in the way of cohesive networks he could use to try and find out who he was, or where he came from. A basic DNA and fingerprinting test brought up nothing, not in the archives in Osaka, anyway.

"Sam" was the only tattoo he had that had made it out in one piece, three letters spelled out in plain font on his right shoulder. There was another name on his left, but that one had been all but destroyed when the Kaiju nearly ripped his arm off. He would have been incredibly lucky to just have use of his arm at all, but nearly five years after the attack, he had a full range of motion back. The only thing that remained of the tattoo were a few lines of ink, and what might have been part of a D and possibly an N. He wasn't sure.

The tattoo between them, in the middle of his back, was another name, and it was mostly wiped out by scars as well. He thought maybe the latter half of the word said "pda," or something close. The ink was smudged and the skin had been ripped open by careless Kaiju teeth and resealed with stiches and scars that had not cared to preserve the ink. There was the faint hint of lines that suggested that some kind of design had been inked around the word but Sam tired pretty quickly of trying to strain over his injured shoulders to try and see his back. The extensive scarring was in itself not pretty to look at, and Sam preferred not to think about it if he could.

His life before waking up in the hospital remained an impenetrable question mark as well, but Sam had resigned himself to never having the answers to the questions he wanted.

What he did know was what life had been like after.

He'd been told and shown about life before the Kaiju attacks. He'd been informed that there was a point when humanity didn't live under constant threat of attack and maybe he believed it, but everything about the world he knew was shaped by fear. The sirens would blare and if you had any desire to live, you ran for shelter.

It seemed like more and more recently, the attacks would come, though Sam rarely concerned himself. He tried to stay safe.

Perhaps it was repressed memories from his own attack, but the massive monsters scared the ever-loving shit out of him. He had no desire to test his luck against their mighty jaws again.

Sam remembered the initial confusion and blurry awareness from his time in the makeshift hospital. He'd spent six weeks in a bed recovering.

The doctors had placed his picture and description on multiple sites set up for survivors of various attacks. He was listed as a survivor of an attack on Osaka. Clearly, he wasn't Japanese, though he understood the language. He spoke English as proficiently as Japanese, but hadn't had the opportunity to discover why that was, or whether there were other languages he knew that he wasn't aware of. It was weird to think of himself, perhaps sitting down to books of Japanese characters to learn the language as an adult, or maybe learning it as a child, living in Japan. He wondered what other hard won skills he had that had been torn away in the Kaiju attack that had devastated his body and wiped his mind clear.

Those days in the hospital remained a haze of boredom and drug induced fog. Sam couldn't think of a single part of his body that didn't hurt.

The final tally of his injuries was as horrific as it was impressive; he'd broken both legs and nearly all of his ribs. That was in addition to the extensive damage done to his left arm.

When Sam worked up the courage to check beneath the dressings on his torso, he could see ragged teeth marks stretching from his collarbone done to his thigh, each one as far around as his arm. He'd needed multiple blood transfusions, and most of his liver and parts of his intestines had to be removed.

Most of the skin running down the left side of his body looked like someone had tried to feed him through a meat grinder.

Sitting up hurt. Flipping through the pages on a book about Kaiju that a helpful nurse had gotten for him hurt. Signing his name on the forms listing himself as a survivor of a Kaiju attack hurt. Even breathing hurt.

Sam did a lot of reading in those early days.

Everything was new, everything was completely shocking and incredible to him. He read everything he could get his hands on – classic literature recommended by one of the patients next to him and trashy romance novels smuggled in by the nurses, and he even worked his way through six volumes on computer maintenance and coding that had been left in a back room somewhere. Computers fascinated Sam – almost as much as Kaiju did.

Newspapers and medical pamphlets on the Kaiju and their rampages were easily available, and slowly, Sam built up a reasonable understanding of what was going on in the world around them.

Six weeks after first waking up on the hospital, Sam was set to start physical therapy.

His muscles, unused for so long after his injuries, protested extensively.

He hurt constantly. Even walking a few steps left him breathless and frustrated with his broken body and his weakened lungs.

"You have to be patient," he was told more than once.

But Sam didn't want to be patient.

He wanted to be healthy, he wanted to be out of the damn hospital.

He wanted his memory back.

Christ, he wanted to be able to walk three steps without collapsing.

He wanted a lot of things, but no matter what he wanted, he knew the only thing on that list within even conceivable reach was getting out of this hospital. So he threw himself into his physical therapy with a single minded determination.

Slowly, he improved.

Three consecutive steps became five. Five became eleven.

There were days when pain locked his muscles up so bad he couldn't even sit up, but with every passing week, those too became less frequent, even though they were thoroughly disheartening when they did occur.

It appeared that Sam's amnesia only affected his past – there was nothing wrong with his short or long term memory, except for the obvious twenty some year blackout before waking up in the hospital.

It meant that he could be released to find regular housing and a job, and try and live life as normally as possible with a gaping black hole in his past. Perhaps, meant he could get out of the hospital and start trying to fill in the missing pieces of his memories.

From the ward, he applied for an apartment and a job, with the help of one of the nurses.

He found a job doing tech support he could manage over the phone and for extended periods of time without wearing out his still healing body.

It also meant he had worked out a place where he could live once he left the hospital. Luckily, the costs of care for victims of Kaiju attacks were being subsidized by the state, as part of the international initiative to fight off the monsters, which meant that Sam was only left with the puzzle of how to start off a new life, Tabula Rasa.

Several weeks after the start of his physical therapy, Sam was finally cleared to leave the hospital, with the strict injunction that he _take it easy,_ like the nursing staff thought he was about to go running into the ocean shaking a spear, yelling for some Kaiju to emerge to fight him.

Sam assured his doctor he had no intentions of being anywhere near another Kaiju in his entire life.

More than anything else, he wanted answers.

So the day he left, he moved into his new apartment, a small prefurnished one bedroom place Sam could afford on his teleworking salary. His office paid for his phone line and internet connection, though he didn't have a computer (just one very clever phone – and how clever it was, Sam mused, that he could access any piece of information he wanted with just a few touches of a screen!).

He found a list of contacts from the international survivors registry, and began making calls of his own – this time not for work, but to try and find someone – anyone – out there who knew him.

But every single call ended with dead ends.

This family didn't speak a word of English (making them unlikely suspects for Sam's original family), that family had found a few body parts (and unless Sam's doctors were lying about something major, Sam was pretty sure he had all of his), and another wasn't interested in talking to him at all.

Most were able to rule out having a connection to Sam in any way – the brother or son or husband they were missing couldn't be as tall as Sam, or had blonde hair, or certain birthmarks Sam was definitively able to rule out.

It took him less than a week to run through the contact information of every single family with a family member that was missing with no leads on the registry.

He didn't know what else to do, other than try to carry on as best he could.

He needed funds, a source of income so he could feed himself and regroup. It had been several months since the attack at this point, so a few more days or weeks wouldn't make much of a difference anymore.

At this point he was just hoping someone recognized "White, 6"4, male, 20-25 years old, brown hair, tattoo with "SAM" on right shoulder."

Sam didn't make a habit of watching the news, though the reports of Kaiju attacks were impossible to avoid. He heard the gossip all over work, during the few occasions he had to come in and work from the physical office, on the street, wherever he went.

It seemed like the attacks were coming more frequently, though the giant robots he'd been told were called Jaegers seemed to do a good job of keeping them back. Only rarely did Kaiju make it to shore, and usually only because every other Jaeger was under repairs, or one got passed the Jaeger in its way.

Sam checked in with the international registry with decreasing frequency, loosing faith that the single listing might be able to help him find his family. What if the hospital had been wrong, and he'd been injured in a different attack?

What if his family was looking for him but thought he was dead because he wasn't listed in the right place?

He had to find answers. He had to know for sure, to try and discover who he had been before.

To do that, he needed to leave Osaka.

He'd just come to the point where he was comfortable where he lived. He worked from home three days a week, and from the office the other two. He had – well, not friends, but people he knew well and saw regularly. He had a place to live, and moving would be starting all over again.

"You're going to have a hard time leaving by plane," one of his coworkers told him, when Sam raised the issue with him in the breakroom. "That is, unless you've got a fortune you weren't telling us about."

Sam hummed noncommittally, tapping on the side of the coffee mug he was holding. The truth was he could never have afforded a plane ticket out of Japan, not away from the Pacific Rim. As it was, he was barely affording his apartment and food costs.

He didn't have a fortune. What he did have was an able and mostly healed (if horrifically scared and occasionally aching) body, and the desperate need to discover the truth about what had happened to him.

That left only one option, one Sam didn't want to consider.

He'd have to cross the pacific rim somehow.

"Know any ship crews that are hiring?"

His coworker looked at Sam like he was insane.

"Look, that kind of work is bad news, you're just as likely to die by Kaiju as you are to make it where you want to go."

"I just want to find out what happened to me," Sam said. It was common knowledge around his office that the quiet giant of a man that had started working there several months ago had been attacked by a Kaiju and _lived –_ as evidenced by the sling he still wore holding his left arm, and the scars just visible above the collar of his shirt. It was only less commonly known – but certainly no less interesting to the more dedicated gosspis at work – that he had no memory of his life before the attack. That fact had to come out, because there was no other way Sam could explain away a lack of basic competency with regards to photocopiers or pencils, but could still run lines of code when needed.

"I need answers," Sam said, gesturing with his left arm, still bent in its sling. He would have to wait for the arm to fully heal if he were going to go through with his wild plan anyway.

While he was in a hurry to find answers, Sam wasn't exactly in a rush to go up against another Kaiju.

His coworker sighed heavily.

"I'll ask around."

…

The steamer was a twenty-person cargo ship, and offered four times what Sam's salary in construction was as hazard pay.

There were very few people in the world who were suicidal, brave, or desperate enough to sign onto a trip across the Pacific Rim by boat. Even ignoring the possibility of storms, poor sailing conditions, and the length of the journey, these days there was the additional obvious danger that at any moment, a giant fucking monster could come up out of the ocean and swallow your entire crew whole, boat and all.

Ladies and gentlemen, enter Sam. A man with nothing but his desperation to his name.

The ship was run by a man named Brady, who was vague on the actual content of the cargo they were transporting. He seemed nice enough, though he looked like he'd never worked a day of manual labor in his life. Brady cheerfully informed Sam that his immediate superior on board the ship would be the one to issue his explicit orders, relayed through radio by Brady himself.

To be honest, if his need weren't desperate, Sam would have never wanted to uproot his life like this. He was damn terrified of the Kaiju, and there was a very real possibility he could die in yet another Kaiju attack at sea.

After signing on for the voyage, his nightmares came back full force. Every night, without fail, he dreamed of choppy seas and screaming wind and crashing rain, all accompanying the shadowy form of a monstrous, screeching Kaiju bent on finishing what one of it's predecessors had already started with Sam.

He woke shaking and sweating every night.

"How exactly did you meet this guy?" Sam asked his coworker again after signing his employment papers. He was in the office for the last time, delivering his resignation to his boss.

"We were in the same frat together," the man shrugged. "He had a job opening, I passed it on. You gonna take the work?"

Sam nodded.

"I've already signed on," he said. "I'm leaving next week."

"Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, with everything-"

Sam shrugged, his posture tightening in determination.

"I'm not sure of anything," he admitted. "But I don't think my past is in Osaka, and I need to find out who I am. I need the truth."

Sam's coworker clapped him on the shoulder, his face grim.

"Watch out for Kaiju," he said seriously. "I hear they bite."

Despite himself, Sam smiled a little.

"Yeah," he said. "Thanks, I'll keep it in mind."

He turned away, leaving his office for the very last time.

Sam hoped with everything he had that he was right, and that somewhere on the other side of the ocean, he really could find the truth.

If he was wrong, he'd be risking his life for nothing.

More than that, he hoped he wouldn't die before he got the chance to find out.


	4. Part I Chapter III

_Pt I, Chapter III: Sail_

…

The watery sunlight filtered through a light haze of clouds as it began to climb the horizon. It was early in the morning, and Sam was already immersed in his new work.

He'd left notice at his apartment, packed anything he felt he needed with him, and left his like in Osaka behind without a trace of his ever having been there.

He arrived on the deck of _The Hellhound_ while the sky was still dark with night, and signed in with the shift manager.

She was not what he was expecting. Slight with short blonde hair that was artfully tousled, the woman - who insisted on being called Meg – was friendly, if a little stern. Sam had the feeling she was a strict taskmaster, a feeling brought on by the precision with which she kept records of the duty logs and positions of every sailor on board.

He'd been shown to his sleeping quarters below deck (a room with three bunk beds, shared with five other sailors) where he could leave his belongings, and then put to work.

He helped work the machinery that brought aboard the heavy steel bins of cargo, assisting with physically maneuvering them onto the deck. The work made his muscles strain with effort, but it was in exertion, not injury. Sam's body was now fully healed, and he used his large size and renewed health to his advantage now.

As the sun began to rise the engines deep below the ship began to hum. Sam would be put to work in the engine room with the rest of the sailors once the cargo was secure, and he knew there would be several grueling weeks of that work ahead.

Finally, as day truly broke, _The Hellhound_ began its slow movement out of the bay, into the open waters of the ocean beyond.

The trip was scheduled to last thirteen days. The commander in charge of their engine speed was heard swearing up and down he'd do it in nine, making double time across the region closest to the Breach. In the mess hall on board, the duty shift manager had a chart displayed on the large screen, showing their progress, with a large, red circle around the most dangerous piece of ocean.

"We're using radar imaging just like the military," Meg said, addressing every assembled sailor once they were under way. "We'll know the second a Kaiju is in the area, and will comply with all stated directions for avoiding its path."

"And if a Kaiju does come for us?" one of the sailors asked fearfully.

Meg folded her arms and stared the man down with a glare that made Sam want to hide.

"You get hazard pay for a _reason,"_ she said carefully. "Does anyone feel that the risks of this voyage have been inadequately outlined?"

Rapidly shaking heads around the room were enough for the woman to give an unimpressed nod.

"Like I said," we take precautions," she said. "And I'm in this same as any of you. But being afraid of what's hiding out there isn't a good enough reason for all of us to not do our jobs. So let's not create crises when we don't have any."

Sam didn't let the words outwardly affect him, but now, trapped on the open ocean, he was wondering how much his past was worth to him.

There was some grumbling among the sailors on board after that, but it all quieted down eventually. And Meg _was_ right, after all; they'd all signed up to be here. They all knew the risks, and there was no turning back now.

…

Surprisingly, Sam found that on the open ocean, with the hum of the ship's engine beneath him thrumming in his bones, and the feel of solid steel around him, he slept peacefully.

He woke up feeling warm and protected with a name just beyond the reach of his consciousness, and the smell of oil and gunpowder ticking a sense in the back of his mind.

He wondered if maybe he was starting to remember already.

…

On the fifth day, they made the closest pass to the Breach that they would make during the entire voyage. Meg addressed them again at breakfast, reminding them at the ships command would remain in constant contact with the Coast Guard and had it's own eyes on the region as well.

They would know the second a Kaiju showed it's ugly face above the rim. The question was whether or not they would be able to do anything to stop it.

The engine room was working double time all through the morning. Meg explained they were going to try and double their ship's speed while passing the area, to pass by the danger zone in as little time as possible.

Sam didn't know what he expected, but the crew worked in terse, tense silence. Perhaps he thought there would be more yelling, or panic. But there was nothing but grim and quiet efficiency.

It felt like everyone around him was afraid to so much as sneeze, for fear of bringing down a monstrous death upon them all.

Lunch was eaten in the engine room. Sam was working with three other men keeping the engine cool. Steam and heat were filling the room, and by afternoon, the overtaxed engine was beginning to whine worryingly.

The high-pitched noise had started during lunch. Every once in a while, someone would glance nervously over at the vital stats monitoring the piece of equipment. She was pushing through the excess heat and strain well, but by the time the sun was high in the sky, the metal under their feet was shuddering worryingly, and the whine was more of a moan.

Sam didn't know how much more speed could be coaxed out of the engine without it breaking down.

The thought of being trapped here, _right on the Pacific Rim_ without any way to escape, made his breath hitch in his throat.

He could just imagine it – the dying groan of the engine, punctuated by a sudden silence. And then they would hear the alarm bells go off. Warnings would be shouted over the intercom, and they would brace for impact. They would hold on for dear life as a Kaiju slammed right into them. Perhaps some would hold on, or be torn far enough away from the ship to be picked up by emergency crews after the fact, if they didn't die of starvation, dehydration, or drowning thirst. He thought about having survived being mauled by one Kaiju only to die here, before he ever found out the truth-

"Good work men, let's bring her back down to ten knots an hour," Meg's voice came over the intercom. "We're far enough past the Breach now."

Every single member of the crew exhaled deeply, trying to pretend that none of them had really been able to take a deep breath since that morning.

Sam relaxed against the metal wall of the engine room as the engine slowed to less than half her former speed. The shuddering of the metal floor had stopped, and the room was filled with the quiet hum of the cooling engine.

The most dangerous piece of their journey was over.

…

Sam didn't know what had woken him from his dreamless sleep.

Around him, his bunkmates were sleeping calmly, the sound of their deep snoring filling the room comfortably.

Sam chuckled at the thought that most of them snored louder than the engine, deep below.

He looked over at the digital clock on the wall above their door. In bright red letters, it proclaimed that it was only three in the morning, far too early to wake up.

Sam tried to roll over and go back to sleep, but there was nothing for it. He just couldn't get comfortable again.

With an internal groan, Sam sat up, careful not to hit his head on the ceiling above him.

 _Maybe a walk would help ease him back to sleep._

While it wasn't technically against the rules to leave one's sleeping quarters, most of the higher ups on board had _discouraged_ nighttime wanderings around the ship with a stern word. Sam at least understood why – in an emergency, they wanted to be able to account for the crew as quickly as possible.

Still, he couldn't sleep, so he silently slipped out of bed, his bare feet meeting the cold linoleum with a soft thud. He toed into his boots and left his quarters, slipping through as small a crack in the door as possible, so as not to wake his bunkmates.

Knowing that the cargo bay would be completely empty and quiet this time of night, Sam headed down towards the hull of the ship. He pulled open the metal door to the bay, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light inside.

He'd wander for a bit and go back to sleep, he reasoned. He was just trying to wear out his body and get back to sleep.

His feet padded softly against the metal floor. Sam's steps were light enough that they didn't make much noise as his boots met the metal floor. He could hear the even draw of his breath, the low thrum of the engine beneath him, and –

Voices?

Somewhere up ahead, there were at least two people, arguing.

Sam dodged quickly behind another crate, making sure he hadn't been seen. He had no idea what was going on, but he didn't want to walk into the middle of an argument, not now anyway.

"Why do you _insist_ on wasting my time?"

That was Meg, the shift manager. Her voice was sharp with irritation.

"We'll be ready to take a closer look as soon as the equipment is functional," another, quieter voice said. "We had an alarm go off indicating that one of the specimens might have been compromised, and we can't check on the cargo without your approval-"

Sam snuck closer in time to hear Meg sigh dramatically. From this new angle, he could see Meg, mostly cast in shadow, with her hands crossed in front of her. Three other men were setting up some kind of equipment connected to a huge screen.

Sam frowned. There shouldn't be a reason to have to check on the cargo mid voyage, right? It wasn't as though there had been any emergencies on board that might require checking on the cargo immediately, in the dead of night, while most of the crew was asleep.

Something wasn't right.

What had Sam gotten himself into? The presence of official looking experts in coats, with a multitude of equipment that did who knows what was worrying. Were they smuggling drugs on board?

Sam shifted so he would have a better view of the screen they were projecting an image onto. It was clearly the inside of the crate, as viewed in ultrasound.

"We can't open up the cargo here, the environment is too humid for the specimens," one of the men said nervously, shifting so that Meg could look more closely at the contents. "A full visual inspection will have to wait until the specimens are unloaded into a lab with a properly controlled environment."

"So what am I looking at?" Meg asked, unimpressed, her voice sharp with irritation.

"You can see the organic material outlined here," the man gestured at the screen. "There are no cracks, and the containers maintaining the specimens continue to report optimal conditions within the transportation crates."

"So everything's fine," Meg said, unimpressed.

"Well, yes."

"Then why was I woken up this early in the morning?" she demanded.

The man apologized, muttering about false alarms, but as Meg turned away from him, clearly ignoring the rest of his line of explanations, Sam got a full look at the screen.

It wasn't drugs, or guns, or anything else Sam might have expected (though he really didn't have any idea what he _thought_ was going on).

It was so, so much worse than that.

Sam had never seen a Kaiju, to his memory.

But it was very clear what he was looking at.

He could see the clear outline of a large horn, surrounded by equipment he assumed was meant to monitor the "specimen" as it had been called. Smaller crates piled next to it seemed to hold smaller horns and teeth – some the size of Sam himself.

He stepped back in shock and horror, his foot slamming down with a loud clanging sound that echoed around the room.

"These are Kaiju remains," he said softly.

"That's exactly right."

Sam whirled around, to find Meg standing right behind him.

"Busted," she grinned at him. That smile profiled nothing pleasant.

…

"Sit."

Sam had been directed to Meg's office onboard the ship. The fluorescent lights above them flickered to life as she hit the switch, and sat down behind her desk, which was perfectly neat with the exception of a ledger that had work rotations. Sam recognized it because it was the same sheet of paper that would go up on the door of the mess hall before breakfast.

"For now, I don't think it's worth bothering the captain, or the big bossman in charge," Meg began. Sam felt like he was holding his breath, like he was trapped in a room with a wild lioness.

"So, Brady didn't mention we were smuggling Kaiju parts," Sam said, testing the waters.

Meg smirked.

"Well, it's not exactly legal, is it?" She asked. "As far as most governments are concerned, we're just shipping pharmaceuticals."

Christ.

Sam had stumbled onto a smuggling ring.

He wondered if it was common knowledge that smuggling Kaiju bits was illegal. Probably?

"I appreciate you're probably tempted to just kill me to avoid me telling anyone," Sam said reasonably, hoping this approach didn't backfire horribly. "But I literally wouldn't be able to tell anyone anyway, so it's a moot point."

Meg raised an eyebrow.

Sam sighed.

He pulled up the corner of his nightshirt, exposing a small fraction of the terrible scars there.

"I got attacked by a Kaiju a year ago," he said, ignoring the slight change in the woman's expression (he couldn't tell if it was horror or pity). "I don't have any memories before that point. I don't _know_ anyone. Anyone I talked to would immediately assume because of my diagnosis that I was delusional. And since the doctors weren't able to actually identify me, according to everyone in the world, I don't technically exist."

It was an approach that had a 50-50 shot of convincing her to leave him alone. The other 50% risk was Meg deciding that he was either lying, or taking advantage of the fact that nobody would be looking for him to just kill him and dump his body here.

Meg tapped her chin with a finger, eyes narrowed.

Then she smiled brightly.

Sam felt chills run down his back.

"How positively delightful," she said. "An invisible man."

Sam folded his arms defensively, wondering what Meg was thinking. She leaned back, considering the man in front of her.

"To be perfectly honest, there are much better uses for you than as feed for sharks," she said bluntly, and Sam let go of the breath he was holding. Oh thank god.

"Have you considered what you will do when you get to Alaska?" Meg asked.

Sam shrugged.

"I'm trying to find answers," he said. "I figured I start there."

"Well, Sammy, then you should stick around here," Meg said. "We could always use another pair of hands working in our organization, and you wouldn't even have to work cargo shipping if you didn't want to. Clearly you're clever, if a bit clueless. And having no identity is useful in our line of work."

Was she offering him a job?

"Is this is the kind of offer that's actually an offer or the kind that ends up with me disappearing if I say no?" Sam asked cautiously.

Meg just smiled. Sam was reminded unpleasantly of a lioness that has just caught sight of her prey.

"Think about it," she smiled. "And think about what we might do if Brady decides that having someone outside the family knowing about our… operations… is too large of a risk."

Okay that was a threat. That was definitely a threat, right?

Sam gulped.

"Now why don't you go ahead and go back to bed," Meg suggested. "Duty shift starts in three hours."

Sam couldn't get out of there fast enough.

...


	5. Part I Chapter IV

_Pt I, Chapter IV: Drown_

 _…_

They made land in Alaska four days later. It was early summer, and the sun was shining out of a bright clear sky. Even so, the air carried with it even now an icy chill of winter.

Sam took his pay and ran. As soon as Meg released him from duty with his check, he slipped off into the docks, unnoticed into the brisk cold. He lost himself into the crew before she had the chance to stop him. He didn't want to give her one.

He had no papers, not that anyone cared terribly much about that kind of stuff these days. Hadn't you heard? The world was ending.

Two years and five months after Impala stumbled onto a long forsaken beach along the coast, Sam vanished into an industrial port.

His plan, half formed as it was, was to get himself listed as a survivor of at least one American Kaiju attack. He was sure he had a family out there someone, someone looking for him. The name on his shoulder might well be someone important – Sam might be his brother or girlfriend or best friend - and the ruined tattoos on his left shoulder and back might belong to someone equally important in his life. There was someone out there who missed him, there had to be. Sam was the most important thing about him, so Sam he was, but he wanted his _real_ identity back. He wanted his _life,_ whatever it had been.

Osaka, Alaska, and Hong Kong. Three attacks at roughly the right time frame. Maybe someone might still be scanning those archives, hoping against hope, driven as much by desperation as Sam himself. Sam uploaded his picture, age, and as much information as he had about himself as he could.

This opened up two new registry lists and Sam holed up in an apartment paid for with his salary from the steamer, making almost nonstop calls.

Nearly two and a half years down the line, most of the families he spoke to had already found one form of closure or another. Of the half dozen or so families on each list that still had no information, none provided promising leads to his past.

Sam was discouraged, and he was getting tired of waiting. He wanted to know the truth. He got himself fingerprinted and DNA tested to sign onto a constriction crew. Neither search came up with anything.

For Gods sake, _someone_ had to be out there looking for him. It wasn't like he'd appeared out of thin air the day a Kaiju decided to tear him apart! He had to have at the very least parents, some kind of family. He wondered if they'd given up looking for him. He wondered at least once a day if he should give up the search himself, when it was yielding no results and only causing him further agony.

The Kaiju attacks were increasing in frequency. A new policy called for the creation of heavy, thick walls on coastal cities. A Wall of Life, they called it.

The walls were meant to slowly phase out the need for Jaegers – which, while effective and awesome, were extraordinarily expensive and incredibly dangerous.

Sam wondered what the plan was. Just leave walls up around every piece of land, and let the Kaiju run rampant in the ocean? How long would it take for an army of them to amass beyond walls of steel and iron, even if they held? It was a stupid idea, but he held his tongue and kept his opinions to himself. Large as he was, he couldn't avoid attracting at least a little attention, especially if he worked in short sleeves, which left the terrible scars along his arms and up his next visible to all. He didn't need any more notice than he had.

Sam got himself signed onto a crew manufacturing a wall around Alaska's coast, in exchange for rations and lodging. It was hard, manual labor that left him exhausted at the end of each day.

On bad days, he felt the phantom touch of a Kaiju's careless teeth biting deep into his shoulder and chest. He didn't know if it was fabrication or true memory, but the attack had left him with a deep ache in the scar tissue that covered a lot of his body. He avoided working shirtless, like many others did during the worst of the labor, because he didn't want the questions.

On the really bad days, he would work irritated and withdrawn, having been kept up by nightmares and cold sweats.

It seemed that the only parts of his past his mind was willing to dredge up were the ones that involved his near brush with death by Kaiju.

The work did help though. And at the end of most days, Sam was too worn out to do anything but pass out into a peaceful, dreamless sleep. That was just fine with him.

The best part was that he lived, ate, worked, and slept in a crowd of men of similar sizes, builds, and descriptions as himself. He didn't think Meg (or anyone she worked for) would still be looking for him at this point. He'd kept their secret – more out of self preservation and a lack of willingness to bother trying to prove anything he'd seen to a police force that was already overtaxed with more important things. And really at the end of the day, he was a semi-curious sailor with a murky past and no identity. He couldn't be _that_ interesting.

That didn't mean he wasn't taking precautions to make sure he wasn't easy to find.

Roughly four months after arriving in Alaska, a new possibility emerged.

"Did you hear about the attack out near Milan?" one of Sam's coworkers was shouting over the roar of electric drills and welding equipment. "Heard the Jaegers managed to stop the Kaiju twenty miles off the coast without any casualties."

"Man, those Jaegers are badass," another one replied. "Bet those pilots get laid like crazy."

"Can you imagine practically living in someone else's head though?" the first man asked with a waggle of his eyebrows. "I bet if they're getting any tail at all it's probably with each other."

A round of loud laughter followed, but Sam was frowning in thought. His brain was stuck on the words _twenty miles off the coast,_ sparking with inspiration.

It was so obvious, why hadn't he tried before?

He'd been signed onto a cargo ship just a few months ago, after all. What if he'd been a victim of an attack off land? Those rarely got huge amounts of media attention, and generally didn't have online manifests of survivors, because the crew could be accounted for – or not – fairly quickly.

Sam was big, worked well with his hands, and could well have been on board a fishing or transport vessel when disaster struck. The thought pressed on his patience all day, and he'd never been more relieved for the end of his shift. He practically raced towards town, heart pounding with excitement.

Was this perhaps the meaning of his nightmares? He'd thought they were reproductions of his own fear from his voyage across the Pacific Rim, but the echo of a Kaiju roaring in time to crashing waves, and the screech of metal in the ocean could have been leading him to the right conclusion all along.

He needed to get to the library's computers.

It took him an hour and a half padding through the snow before he made it, but Sam slipped into the library with rosy cheeks, panting for breath.

He practically slid into a chair by one of the library's three computers, getting a severe look from one of the librarians for causing a mild disturbance. Sam booted up the computer and pulled up the archive of Kaiju attacks.

He narrowed his parameters to a five month period before the date he woke up in the hospital, and hit search. Only three attacks came up – Osaka, Alaska, Hong Kong. Three attacks, separated by several months each. The same three Sam had been running into for years.

He frowned, and tried to specify just offshore attacks. That brought up no results either. He thought for a moment and brought up another government database run out of Canada, and tried the same search parameters. Nothing.

Glaring at the computer, Sam tried to think of something else. He thought maybe he could remember icy water, the crash of thunder and the rush of freezing rain. Perhaps it was just hoping against hope, but Sam couldn't help but feel he was on the right track.

Perhaps there was another set of records that wasn't open to the public.

Sam glanced around the library, making sure nobody was paying him undue attention.

What he was about to do was probably really fucking illegal. Maybe. Sam wondered if "I don't remember basic legal principles because a Kaiju broke my brain" would hold up as a legal defense.

Sam weighed the pros and cons of the decision he was about to make. Then he rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and decided that if this found him the answers to his past, he was willing to do whatever it took.

A basic internet search found him the government coast guard database. Sam figured that they would have something on an attack at sea, and it was slightly more subtle than searching the database for Jaeger pilots.

At least, if someone tried to figure out who had hacked the website and why, they wouldn't be looking for someone who wanted to know about Kaiju attacks during a very specific time frame.

Probably.

Sam grimaced, and opened up the coded page source. This was stupid.

It probably wouldn't even generate any results.

He wasn't even sure he could do this. He'd read about the theory in the books on coding he'd found in the hospital, but had never attempted to use this aspect of his knowledge.

It was a simple matter of scanning the page coding to find a username and password he could appropriate for his use, and then he was in.

For a second, Sam sat back, more shocked than pleased. Then he grinned to himself, despite everything.

Maybe, for the first time in years, he was close to finding out the truth.

He pulled up some random searches, finally making his way towards Coast Guard activity off the coast of Alaska. He narrowed his search parameters to the right time frame...

In the five months that Sam was missing, only three search and rescue missions had been undertaken. Two were the result of an unexpected storm system, but one…

Sam sat up straighter. There was an incident out at sea far off the coast of Alaska. A Kaiju, codename "Knifehead" had been heading straight for Alaska, and a Jaeger had been deployed to stop it. In the process, the pilots had saved a small fishing vessel from the wrath of the massive alien sea monster.

The Coast Guard had been responsible for the rescue, having been running drills in the area. Two pilots managed to secure the entire crew from the vessel, which had sustained minor damage due to the mixture of the storm, the Kaiju, and being manhandled by a giant robot.

Sam imagined that no matter how delicate the pilots of that Jaeger had been with the ship, it would have been almost impossible to transfer it out of the destructive path of a Kaiju without the ship incurring any damage.

So the Coast Guard had responded while the Jaeger went off and did its thing.

Hope bloomed in his chest.

And then was swiftly crushed. Reading the report in its entirety, Sam discovered that while the Jaeger had gone down fighting Knifehead, every single member of the fishing vessels crew was safe and accounted for.

Sam sat back, thoroughly disappointed.

He'd really thought he'd been onto something.

Sam spent anther hour trying to find out if there had been any more offshore events of note within the same time period, but it didn't look that way. Kaiju attacks, while devastating, weren't actually all that common, especially not back then.

Sam sighed.

He erased the computers search history and wiped the hard drive for good measure. It was reset to factory settings now, and there would be no record of who had used it or what other searches they might have tried to make while there.

Hopefully that would be enough to end any investigation, should anyone ever figure out about the almost certainly illegal hacking Sam had done.

He was just disappointed that it hadn't even resulted in anything useful.

Logging out, he waved goodnight to the librarian on duty, and slogged back through the snow towards his government appointed lodgings.

He fell asleep to dreams of a choppy ocean and roaring rain and the echoing screech of an impossibly huge monster.

But not for the first time, he could also remember small arms surrounding him and the smell of leather and gunpowder, and the feeling of being _safe._

The dream was gone by morning,

…

Nearly three years after Sam woke up in a hospital in Osaka, there was news of an attack on Sydney.

Nearly all on site work had stopped to watch the life report of a Wall of Life being tested in action by a real life Kaiju.

Sam watched in horror as the metal Wall of Life around the city gave way to a colossal Kaiju, intent on murder and chaos.

"What the hell are we even doing here?" Someone on site shouted out, anguished, afraid, frustrated. Angry shouting broke out all around the site as work ground to a near standstill.

Sam didn't say anything but he privately agreed. This wall would not hold back a monster like the Kaiju, it could barely even delay them. The evidence was there, staring them right in the face. It took less than an hour for that Kaiju to tear a massive hole in the wall that "protected" Sydney.

The world governments were withdrawing their funding from the Jaeger program in favor of building impressive walls of stone and steel, but they were watching the proof that should have been enough to demonstrate where between those two options humanity should be placing it's trust.

Then the announcer was exclaiming excitedly as a Jaeger slammed into the Kaiju.

"That's Striker Alpha-Meridian, one of the only Jaegers that hasn't been decommissioned yet!" She was practically cheering into the microphone. Sam watched, tuning out the rest of the newscasters voice as he watched the Jaeger efficiently take down the Kaiju, delivering a final blow with the double row of cannons in its chest.

Why were they abandoning the only tried and true ways of destroying the Kaiju? Sam wondered. His work would be much more valuable building Jaegers, it seemed, given how quickly he'd just watched a Kaiju tear through a wall with the same specs as the one he had been commissioned to make.

He watched as the Kaiju died, and felt a spring of hope in his chest.

The camera then panned to a view of the two pilots as they climbed out of the Jaeger's command port. It seemed that Striker Alpha-Meridian was piloted by a father-son team. The younger man was good looking, with a winsome smile that he turned full watt at the camera that panned close to his face. His hair was spiked up in front, and he was built tall and muscled, like most of the Jaeger pilots Sam had seen on the news.

The father was grim. He didn't smile as the cameras focused on him, his close cropped hair and clean shaven face spoke of military experience. He was resting a hand on his son's shoulder, and there was an _ache_ in Sam's chest for that kind of love, that level of attachment to a family member.

He exhaled deeply and forced himself to look away.

Around him, he could hear the cursing and shouting of his colleagues.

Maybe this really _was_ the end of the world.

…

Later that same week, Sam gave up.

There were no more avenues he hadn't explored yet. His gut had said come to Alaska, and try and find his family here, on this side of the Pacific Rim. But perhaps there wasn't anything for him to find. The truth of his past, whatever it was, continued to elude him, and was probably gone forever. However much Sam didn't want to have to accept that, it was his reality.

He would never know who he really was.

It had been _three years._

Surely, if someone were looking for him, they would have found him by now.

Right?

Sam hadn't been able to shake off the strange mood he'd been in since watching the attack on T.V. It was the first time he'd actually seen a Jaeger in action, and the video had left a profound affect on him.

He was having dreams that didn't make any sense. Dreams of Kaiju, dreams of Jaegers, dreams of a city on fire and being huddled in the arms of an older boy in the backseat of an old car. He couldn't make any sense of them whatsoever.

Perhaps he was beginning to remember the _before,_ but if that were true, Sam wasn't sure he really wanted to. If these dreams really were memories, then that meant Sam had more memories of personal interactions with Kaiju than that singular attack.

He put the dreams down to a combination of fear and obsession over the newscast. He'd let it get in his head and scare him, because all he seemed to be thinking about – really all he'd thought about since the day he'd woken up in the hospital – was Kaiju. How to stay away from them, how to stay safe and never end up being used as a chew toy by one again.

And if the person he'd once been had more to do with the Kaiju – well Sam wasn't that man anymore. With a feeling that was almost like relief, he let go of his past.

He stopped checking for updates on the international lists of survivors and the families looking for them, stopped trying to contact people looking for lost loved ones, gave up the search completely.

He couldn't live this half-life anymore, a life spent waiting for something to happen before he could embrace it fully. He had to accept that perhaps he would never have the answers, and he had to find his own way. Even if it meant giving up entirely.

It was time to stop trying to recapture his past. He was alive, and while that remained the case, he had to focus on moving forward, no matter what lay behind.

…

Of course, as is the case with so many lost things, Sam's past only found him after he'd decided to stop looking.

It was midday, and construction on the Wall of Life around Alaska was in full force. But wherever you looked, it was impossible not to notice the grim looks and disheartened movements of every man and woman at work. This was an exercise in futility – but one that would keep them fed for the foreseeable future, so they kept at it.

Sam was replacing the wiring in a broken welding torch when a shadow fell over his work.

"Sam?"

Sam looked up, annoyed and confused.

The person standing in front of him was slightly shorter than him (if equally as broad), older with a salt and pepper beard that was cut with military precision. The man's black suit fit perfectly and didn't have a single crease in it. He gave off a distinct aura of being completely in charge.

"That's what they call me," Sam said, wiping his forehead and placing the torch off to the side for the moment so that he could stand and greet the newcomer. "What do you need?"  
The man's face softened a little. Sam thought maybe he looked sad.

"My name is Bobby Singer."

He paused, like maybe that should mean something to Sam. The latter couldn't imagine why it would. And then something clicked.

"You run the Jaeger program, don't you?" He asked, slightly surprised. What was the director of the Jaeger program doing _here,_ of all places? And why on earth was he looking for _Sam?_ He tried not to let his confusion show on his face. "I've seen you on TV. Everyone's in an uproar over the defunding, especially with the attack in Australia."

Bobby Singer nodded thoughtfully. Sam self consciously brushed his hair out of his face, wondering if there was dirt on his nose or food stuck in his teeth or something, given the intensity of the other man's gaze.

"We're just glad Striker stopped that Kaiju before it did any more damage," Bobby said gruffly. "Last thing we need is any more attacks running for days like they used to in the beginning."

"I can imagine," Sam said. "I've read about some of those attacks. You piloted a Jaeger in some of them, didn't you?"

 _Why are you here?_ The younger man wondered, studying the other man, trying to figure out what was going on, but unwilling to come right out and ask just yet.

Bobby nodded, his face unreadable, eyes still fixed on the younger man's face.

"They told me you don't have any memories from before being in a Kaiju attack five years ago," he said carefully.

Sam looked down.

"That's right," he agreed.

"You're listed as a survivor of three separate attacks," he prompted again, and Sam set his jaw stubbornly, even if he blushed.

"Yeah well, I wanted to be found," he defended his actions. "I washed up on a beach in Japan and nobody knew where I'd come from, they just _figured_ I'd been in an attack in Osaka at the time."

"So you hacked and misled your way into being placed on multiple registries," Bobby agreed.

"There were four different Kaiju attacks around the same several week period, including at least one that never made landfall that might have targeted a ship I could have been on."

Sam's face was very red, and it was just beginning to occur to him that what he'd done might technically have been classified as a crime.

"That would have been Knifehead," Bobby agreed pleasantly, giving away nothing. "And you're not in any trouble, son. Truth be told we all thought you were dead for three years."

The words stopped Sam dead in his tracks, shock and excitement shutting out everything else, including relief at not being considered a criminal for trying to track down his past.

 _We._

Bobby knew him.

 _We all._

There were others. Maybe he did have a family after all, one that had only stopped looking because they had lost hope completely. Excitement, confusion, hope, fear, all warred inside him as he stared up at Bobby Singer, wondering how on earth he was connected to the man responsible for sending giant robots to go fight invading monsters.

"You know me?"

"I do, and I want to make you a deal," Singer proposed. "I need a Jaeger pilot, a competent one. I want you for the job. You agree, I'll fill in some of those gaps."

Sam didn't hear anything past that first admission.

"You know who I am?" He demanded.

Bobby nodded, and maybe that was another sad smile on the edge of his lips.

"Yeah, that's right."  
"But, how?"

"That's not the deal," Bobby said. He reached into the briefcase next to him and pulled out a file. Sam could see his own face staring back at him in a picture clipped to the side – younger, his hair floppy and his smile brighter than he'd ever seen his own, but it _was_ him. He couldn't see a single scar.

"You come pilot a Jaeger for me, and this is yours," Bobby said. "It's everything I or anybody else could know or remember about you."

That's when the rest of Bobby's "bargain" asserted itself in Sam's awareness.

This man, this person who knew who he was, wanted him to pilot a Jaeger?

"But I don't know the first thing about piloting a Jaeger," Sam argued, not quite sure why he was trying to talk this man out of answering every question he'd ever wanted the answer to.

"It's like riding a bike, you never forget," Bobby said. "And you, Sam, were one of the best."

"It still wouldn't be a fair trade," Sam frowned. He used to pilot a Jaeger? He used to be one of those people who could punch through a Kaiju without flinching? Singer had to be delusional.

"You must have the wrong person," Sam sighed, looking back down. "The man in that picture, he looks like me, but that can't be the case."

"Don't be an idjit," Bobby snapped. "You think I don't know one of my own pilots when I see them? Seems like the Kaiju emptied out that giant geeky brain of yours and replaced it with rocks!"

"Whoever you think I was, I'm not that person anymore. I don't know anything he knew, and I'm damn terrified of the monsters out there. Most nights I wake up with the feel of teeth grinding against my bones. I was lucky to survive once, I don't want to go for broke."

Bobby stiffened. Sam thought he saw a flash of pity on the man's face before it hardened.

"Son, in case it escaped your notice, _THE WORLD IS ENDING_ ," he roared. "Soon enough there won't _be_ anywhere safe to run _to._ Where would you rather die? _Here_ , cowering behind a wall we both know wont hold back a single Kaiju? _Or in a Jaeger?"_

The words shook something loose in Sam's core.

Maybe the person he'd been had been much braver, perhaps Bobby was right and he had been a pilot himself, and that person was still inside of him, slumbering. But those words made something stir inside him. It wasn't memory, but maybe –

And he had the answers to Sam's past. He knew who Sam had been, who he might be able to be again.

He hung his head.

"I don't even know my own name."

"That one I'll give you for free," Bobby said sharply. "Sam Winchester. Idjit's got one thing right, at least."

 _My name is really Sam._ Somewhere inside of himself, Sam felt a warm comfort at that knowledge. _I'm Sam Winchester. That sounds right._

"Why on earth would I have my own name tattooed on my shoulder?" Sam asked with a sudden frown. _Who did that?_

Well, obviously, him. For some reason.

Bobby laughed, surprised.

"Oh man your old man is going to have a fit, he had no idea you went and got inked," he grinned.

"You know my dad?"

Sam was quickly reaching information overload. He could feel a throbbing pain in his head as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening.

Bobby raised his eyebrows, tapping the file meaningfully.

Right.

If he wanted the answers to that question and every other curiosity he had about himself, he'd have to agree to this man's demands. Sam pursed his lips. It had been only a few short weeks ago that he'd told himself that if it meant finding out the truth he would do anything - cross any line, brave any danger, face any fear, so long as it meant learning the truth. He'd admitted defeat since then, but he could feel his eyes drawn back to the file like it was a glass of water and Sam himself was a man dying of thirst. It was everything he'd yearned for since he'd first woken up in the hospital _years ago._

Aw hell. Sam didn't know how to give up any more than he knew who he really was. All he knew was that he finally had a clear path forward.

"I'll do it," he said. "But don't say I didn't tell you so when I run screaming at the sight of one of those monsters."

Bobby laughed again, the rough sound comforting against Sam's ears. His next words were probably meant to reassure him, but honestly, Sam wasn't sure they did anything more than send a shiver down his spine.

"Oh don't worry boy, you won't," he said cheerfully. "If there's anything that's truly in your blood, it's fighting Kaiju."

…


End file.
